Abstract :
We report on the noise characteristics of dark current in an infrared hot-electron transistor at 77 K. The measured emitter noise power can be described as the sum of generation-recombination noise and thermal noise. The measured collector noise in our device is shot noise. This result is explained with the binomial statistics for the number of injected electrons to pass through the base and the energy filter. Since the probability for the electrons contributing to the collector current is much less than 1 in our noise measurement range, the binomial statistics can be approximated as Poisson statistics and the noise of the collector current behaves like shot noise.
